Mean Green. A couple hears a boy calling for help from a field of tall grass. They go in to help. And can’t come out. IN THE TALL GRASS is a throat-clutching, unrelenting thriller, based on a novella by Stephen King and his just-as-weird son, Joe Hill (whose name somehow sounds like a Stephen King pseudonym). Pregnant Becky (Laysla De … Read More
GERALD’S GAME
Freedom is just a handcuff away. Vacation. Tote bag. Two pairs of chrome steel handcuffs. Long-married couple Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) and Jessie Burlingame (Carla Gugino) are trying to revive their marriage with a new game. After Jessie is handcuffed to the bedposts, she loses her taste for the game and says No. Uncuff me. Gerald coyly says no. Then he … Read More
IT 2017
He pronouned me… The children of a small town are terrorized by a demon, until they realize they can simply beat the shit out of it. Stephen King’s novel It was a television B-movie in 1990, starring Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown, with a Cagney-gangster voice that is now dated and goofy. This big screen remake puts the IT … Read More
IT 1990
The B-Actors’ Club. Back in 1990, STEPHEN KING’S IT was a reasonably successful and moderately enjoyable TV horror production, using B-Actors and basic practical special effects. After the release of its formidable 2017 remake, the 1990 version looks like a TV production using B-Actors and basic practical special effects. Stephen King’s original novel, It, was one of his many epic … Read More
CARRIE 2013
Rebooted and Re-Blonded. The classic Stephen King novel is remade for a new generation of bullied hot girls. CARRIE is the awkward, bullied outcast at school; her mother is a religious fanatic self-flagellator who regularly imprisons Carrie in the Prayer Closet to atone for whatever sins she has committed by being a girl. With the onset of her period, Carrie … Read More
CARRIE
Unholiest, Bloodiest, Blondest. CARRIE starts with blood. And ends with blood. Startling gouts of life-giving/death-dealing blood. And in between – menstruation, high school, and religious dementia. A true horror movie. Director Brian De Palma brings Stephen King’s 1974 debut novel Carrie to the big screen in blood and strawberry blonde: Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, perfectly embodying the awkward teen … Read More
CARRIE 2002
Snoozefest in Red. CARRIE (2002) is the TV movie remake of the 1976 Brian De Palma feature film, from the Stephen King novel of the same name. And it shows. Director David Carson (STAR TREK GENERATIONS) seems so acutely aware of his film’s low production values, he thinks he can make up for them by adopting the method of MTV … Read More
THINNER
THINNER is Phat. A gypsy’s curse makes a man become – thinner. Before every woman squeals out looking to have the same gypsy curse applied to her fat ass, take heed: he doesn’t stop getting thinner… “It is the tale, not he who tells it.” A Stephen King credo (from The Breathing Method, a short story in Different Seasons) that … Read More
DREAMCATCHER
Same Shit Different Director. So why is it that films made from Stephen King’s stories turn out, for the most part, to be movies that look as if they’d been chiseled out of Silly Putty by escapees from the Home For the Terminally Inept? — Harlan Ellison, Oct 1984, “In Which We Scuffle Through The Embers” (Magazine of S&SF). DREAMCATCHER … Read More
DOLAN’S CADILLAC
The mind of Stephen King is a terrible thing to waste. The director of DOLAN’S CADILLAC, Jeff Beesley, was told by his agent, “If you can’t knock this movie outta the park, you might as well forget it – go back to pumping gas.” Uh, Jeff, I got some bad news…. From a Stephen King short story of the same … Read More
1408
GROUNDHOG DAY with supernatural teeth. Remember IDENTITY? It’s John Cusack trapped in a hotel again! And just like IDENTITY… It was a dark and stormy night. A car misses a turnoff, the driver reverses to see the hotel sign; turning down the side-street, he soon parks, runs across a picturesque bridge to a rustic hotel, sheltering himself from the tempest. … Read More
THE STAND
My Favorite Martian versus Garth Brooks. This story should have stayed in our heads. Reading Stephen King‘s daunting 1000+ page The Stand (restored version, of course), nothing “visual” could intercept our imagination driving onto the wastelands of a dead earth, seeing an unseeable being (Flagg) in our mind’s eye, envisioning the disturbing horrors of the Lincoln Tunnel gridlock, the appendix operation, … Read More